The Joint Investigation Team (JIT), investigating the crash of Boeing in Ukraine, concluded on Tuesday that the missile that shot down the aircraft could be invisible to Russian radars. On Wednesday Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey, which designed the Buk missile system, has rejected investigators’ claims.

This was reported on Tuesday in the Dutch prosecutor's office, coordinating the work of international experts.

"The radar data submitted by the Russian party were checked by two independent experts," the ministry noted. "These experts confirmed the conclusions that the JIT itself had previously submitted. The absence of a missile in radar images (from Ust-Donetsk locator Utes-T) can be explained with several reasons and does not mean that it was not in the airspace."

One of the possible reasons experts called the speed of the rocket, which is "significantly higher than the speed of a passenger aircraft." According to them, "the civil radar station is tuned in such a way that such fast objects usually were not visible in the radar images." This is done in order to "prevent" interference "in the pictures," experts say.

In addition, experts "confirmed that no other aircraft next to MH17 on the images provided can be seen."

Manufacturer rejects reports that MH17 missile could be invisible to Russian radars

Representatives of the Almaz-Antey Concern, which created the Buk missile system, allegedly involved in shooting down the aircraft, denied the statement of the Dutch prosecutor's office that Russian radars could not detect a missile that shot down the Boeing.

"If a Buk missile had been launched from the region designated by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), then it would have had the speed of about 600-620 meters per second in the area where it approached the MH17 Boeing-777 aircraft, which is well within the range of the radar complex. Therefore, it would have certainly been recorded by Utyos-T radar station," Almaz-Antey said.

According to Almaz-Antey, the analysis of raw radar data from the Utyos-T radar station in the area shows that no missile approached the MH17 flight from the east.

"The primary radar data was handed over to Dutch specialists in the primary registration format file. A file like this registers all radar marks received from radar, without any processing. The Utyos-T radar has no limitations on objects travelling with the speed of below 1,000 meters per second (the speed of a Buk missile would be about 600-620 meters in this case) and more than 1,000 meters per second," the company said.

The company also said that when the "primary registration" format used by the Russian side is converted into the ASTERIX format requested by the Dutch side, which is secondary, most raw radar data is lost.

"Separately, we would like to emphasize that without destroying the structure of the primary file, it is impossible to make any changes to such data, it would be immediately apparent," the official response of the Almaz-Antei Concern to the statement of the Joint Investigation Team for MH17 says.

It also notes that the Almaz-Antey Concern has provided the International Commission with raw data from the Russian radar station and methods to process it.

"The primary radar information was transmitted to the Dutch specialists in the format of the primary registration file, that is, before the procedure of any filtration by the equipment of the radar complex's route processing," the statement said.